To think my daughter shouldn't have to share a room with a boy!

[GColdtimer]

Because if you are in Oxfordshire, the council thinks schools should facilitate mixed sex dorm rooms for residential trips, as well as allowing mixed sex loos, changing rooms and sports.

It's on this thread thread

Here's an excerpt from guidance in use in Brighton. IIRC, it's been widely copied in other areas. (Allsorts is a charity supporting gender diverse children.)

This kind of 'progress' is disappointing.

In years to come we will look back and realize how stupid we all were to allow it.

Everyone, keep speaking up for (real) girls' rights.

PurpleCrowbar

That assumes that the school would inform you of a trans pupil.

If the child has transitioned pre-secondary school you wouldn't necessarily know.

Also refusing to take the trip for these reasons could see you fired.

But I personally would just use safeguarding and not be pushed any further.

Myheadisamess31 - so because a girl in your school stayed with a French family and had sex with their same age son, the school ended all foreign language exchanges? And you think a language exchange with a child of the opposite sex should never have been allowed? That's just silly. Regardless of the sex of the child the exchange is with, there may of course well be siblings in the family of the opposite sex. Is it only safe to send your child into another family if they are a girls only family? Well, my dds have done lots of exchanges with families with boys in them. Including exchanges with boys. And we've had girl/boy mixes of foreign students staying with us while doing English courses. They don't have sex because they're sensible. Just like girls and boys who go to co-ed schools in the UK. Are they always sneaking off behind the bike shed to have sex? Should co-ed schools be banned?

Boney yep, but I expect I'd know, tbh.

& - depending on how much I wanted it to be a hill I died on - I might just suddenly go off the idea of running that trip, with a plausible personal reason why I was no longer available . If I needed to keep my job to keep a roof over my own dc's heads, sort of thing.

But the trip would not be going ahead with me leading it if I was expected to supervise mixed sex sleeping arrangements that parents had not agreed to.

I agree that it's worrying that teachers could be put in an invidious position over this.

They don't have sex because they're sensible. Just like girls and boys who go to co-ed schools in the UK

Don't be ridiculous, of course kids in mixed sex schools will have sex with each other. As do teenagers who go to single sex schools.

Teenagers have sex because teenagers have hormones.

They also sneak alcohol, or drugs, along given half a chance.

It is up to adults to prevent this by, for example, sex (not 'identity') segregated sleeping, changing, showering, toileting facilities. Adults should act like damn adults because damn sure teenagers will behave like the teenagers they are.

How naïve are you?

Teenagers don't have sex....honestly, I've heard it all now.

FFS.

if a child is going to have sex on a school trip I don't think that sharing a room is going to make much difference to the chance of this happening. So the pregnancy concern is a bit of a false one.

You’re totally right, they’re going to do it anyway so why bother with any safeguarding.

It is terrifying to see how many people with responsibility for the safeguarding of children are happy to throw that safeguarding out of the window as soon as the trans card is played.

Single sex spaces are safer for girls. girls should never be forced to consent to mixed sex spaces by deception.

The acceptance of lack of consent scares me more than anything.

Kids are much better at this stuff than we are and are also pretty vocal at speaking up when they are uncomfortable in my experience.

But UnicornPug safeguarding is for all children, not just the ones you know that are vocal about asserting their boundaries. Safeguarding practice is supposed to understand that there are many children who are unable to speak up, for all sorts of reasons. These children are especially vulnerable and the right response to them is not promote a culture where they fear the consequences of speaking up.

The scenario that Gasp0de linked too means that a girl, perhaps one with a history of being subjected to sexual abuse, who is upset or distressed by changing with a male child will be told that she is wrong to recognise someone's sex or to be concerned about their sex. If she persists in her distress then she will be singled out and removed from her changing room to change elsewhere therefore exposing her to questioning from her peers etc. What girl in that situation is going to feel able to speak up?

I simply would not allow a female child to go on a trip where they would be sharing mixed gender sleeping.

Bang on, Chicken. Girls are being told to be kind and ignore their instincts that this isn't right. They're being told that if any harm comes to a trans girl from being forced to share space with boys it's the natal girls' fault for being bigoted, not the boys' fault for being violent and intolerant of difference.

Meanwhile, boys are not being told anything of the kind.

Boys and girls who don't conform to an increasingly narrow set of gender stereotypes are told this is because they have been born in the wrong body. The stereotypes are homophobic because they include being attracted to the opposite sex as the default expectation. There are few role models for lesbians in particular. 'Feminine' boys and 'masculine' girls are told their bodies don't match their brains and need medical intervention.

This has all happened so fast. My children are just into their late 20s. It was not an issue when they were at school. What happened?

Doing a language exchange with a boy doesn't mean sharing a bedroom. Sharing a house with a boy without having sex is manageable, surely? But good sex education and availability of contraception is an important safeguard. Which was lacking a few decades ago.

Is there something in the water in Britain now? I ask in all seriousness, because so many seem so ready and even eager to ignore their own common sense and experience nowadays if they risk some fool somewhere calling them ‘bigot’ or something ‘ist’. We all know teenage boys as a class are lecherous little gits who are desperate to cop off with girls. Some might be nice about it. Some aren’t. Most of us spent our teenage years having to deal with their leching and leering, even pawing if they got the chance. Why are we suddenly so willing to force our girls to share changing facilities with them in case they be thought, horror of horrors, not nice? Wen did being nice to every slight possibility of genuine mental ill health become more important than the regular and known problem of likely sexual harassment towards our girls? If British society starts trying to force me to force my girl into shared changing arrangements with boys and even tries to force me to force her to accept harassment then it is time to withdraw from it completely. This is madness. Women all must know it is at root, most of us have had trouble from men.

Is there something in the water in Britain now?

Not just Britain, this rubbish is being foisted on people across the western world. It's in America, Sweden, Australia, you name it.

Whole damn world's lost the plot.

Women of Britain are one of the strongest groups fighting to keep safeguarding in place. Many other countries have already introduced self ID laws.

It nearly happened here but uk women's groups have been trying to get it into public media/knowledge for years now. Still so many people don't know or just don't get how dangerous it is to remove sex segregation completely.

I’m sure I’ve heard that some other countries - Ireland I think? - are managing to introduce trans issues without completely abandoning common sense.

I strongly suspect there's a lot less of this in poorer countries where access to the internet is less widespread and women and girls face horrific sex-based violence and harrassment. The UN campaigns for single-sex toilets in places like India, but we are so complacent about our hard-earned rights that we're just tossing them aside.

YANBU, it's absolutely disgusting. The only males who'd want in with females are the very ones the females should be being protected from by having sex segregated places.

Kids are much better at this stuff than we are and are also pretty vocal at speaking up when they are uncomfortable in my experience

What utter nonsense. Kids are not better at safeguarding themselves than adults. That’s why they don’t leave home at 11 and go and live in kid-only apartments with other kids. They need adults (remember them?) to guide them and lay down rules. Some of which are backed by law. Such as the legal requirement for single sex provision in situations such as changing rooms and dorms which this guidance conveniently forgets.

And don’t forget if any child does volunteer that they are uncomfortable with sleeping in a room with or changing in front of a child of the opposite sex, they will be treated as the one who has a problem and they will be removed and re-educated. Not the ‘little transchild’ (who might be a 6ft tall 15 year old boy who either thinks he’s a girl or is pretending to think so and who in neither case is safe to share a bedroom with teenage girls).

This has happened - happened in my own house!

It's about time all the girls stood together and demanded that the males be kicked out. It's their space, after all.

It's about time that parents spoke up for the rights of their daughters (and sons) not to be forced into sharing changing rooms, showers, toilets and sleeping accommodation with the opposite sex. Because if the Equality & Human Rights Commission have their way, all of our daughters will be changing in cupboards if they object to undressing in front of boys. Their new guidelines were leaked recently:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/girls-must-bow-to-trans-rights-in-new-rules-for-schools-xxs8t5mn5?shareToken=d906a94c339e3c0ce45eb4b9121df29a

Sadly Lucky those girls would be called bigots and non inclusive. They would be ridiculed and bullied. They would be forced out of their female space.

We cannot ask children to stand up to something that adults are struggling to fight against.
Women are losing their jobs, their platforms and their ability to express that humans cannot change sex.

I’m sure I’ve heard that some other countries - Ireland I think? - are managing to introduce trans issues without completely abandoning common sense.

Oh Ireland, the country that promised that males who identify as trans wouldn’t be permitted in female only jails, then permitted a male into a female only jail. That country, you mean?

That worked out well for women, well maybe not for the ones in jail, but then like the U.K., they don’t count do they?

Schools are just the training camps where girls are groomed to not complain about males using their spaces. Once all sex segregation is removed, all males will be free to share all spaces with women and children.